Paying for SEO in U.S. dollars might bring foreign search marketing gigs to our shores.

With the economy in such a mess and the dollar plummeting in value, I’ve seen a total reversal in fortune in a lot of areas. For instance, I live in Palm Springs, located in the southern part of California. After a several year run up in housing prices here, you almost can’t give away real estate now. Prices have dropped, but no one is buying.

No one locally, that is. Palm Springs is snowbird country. This time of year, Canadians by the thousands flock to the desert to escape the cold and snow in their home country. The pitiful dollar has made coming to America a bargain for all of these seasonal residents, so we’re getting an extra large influx of visitors this year.

And, according to my real estate agent friends, housing is a bargain here now, so the agents who haven’t had to take jobs waiting tables are hoping the Canadians will stop waiting for prices to hit bottom and start buying.

Could the plunging dollar affect how we SEOs get our clients, too? Could companies in other countries see the lower dollar as a bargain when paying for our search optimization and marketing services?

Danny Sullivan lamented on his Daily Searchcast recently that he lives in the United Kingdom but is paid in U.S. dollars, meaning less spending power for him at home (C’mon back to the sunshine, Danny, we miss you here in California!).

I just got an unsolicited communication from an SEO firm in Spain about working with them on optimizing a site. I had to turn the project down for lack of time, but it got me to thinking.

When it comes to outsourcing high tech work, will the USA become the next India?

After all, if they pay us in U.S. dollars, it costs companies from some other countries less to do their optimization offshore (here) than it would cost at home. Will offshore outsourcing mean sending the project to the USA?

Something to think about in this season of presidential elections.